This article details the journey of a Theatre and Performance team working in Australian higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using reflective practice informed by Social Constructivism, we addressed the dilemmas of building and shifting an online community of learners. Act One considers the unknown as we shifted online, and the new year…

Teaching artists typically work as solo agents, without the comradery of a like-minded community. After a year of focus groups, teaching observations, and conversations with school and arts administrators, we identified a need for experienced teaching artists to have a chance to reflect upon, renew, and reconsider their teaching practices with…

In this commentary, summarized from a recent interview, the author shares insights and memories from a career devoted to drama and performance studies. He enthusiastically recounts events, initiatives, and collaborations that have helped sustain his lifelong passion for performance.

This article explores the ways in which two years of increased isolation due to COVID affected a cohort of applied theatre students and how their instructors addressed students' elevated anxiety and disconnection from community. In the spring semester of 2022, I was working as the teaching intern for the course Applied Theatre Praxis taught by…

The word "performance" is the basis for our medium. It's what we work toward, look forward to, and talk about with endless fervor. But does this word, this concept, this idea, actually stifle learning, artistic expression, and growth? As a director and professor of theatre for the past 13 years, I have watched this word become the knave…

Performance ethnography is a form of performed research that creates a theatrical representation of ethnographic inquiry. Walford (2009) proposes that frequently performance ethnographers neglect traditional ethnographic practices such as participant observation and substantial time in the field. This paper draws on research which investigated the…

Diversity has been the focus of countless books, articles, and conferences in higher education. Unfortunately, for many of us in the majority culture, this issue never required too much investment of time or concern because we were already benefitting from the existing system of racial and/or gender privilege. In this essay I recount my awakening…

Reverend Father Professor Amechi Nicholas Akwanya is one of the towering scholars of literature in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world. For decades, and still counting, Fr. Prof. Akwanya has worked arduously, professing literature by way of teaching, researching, and writing in the Department of English and Literary Studies of the University of…

Battle Battle: Engaging Diversity in the American Liberal Arts College examines the production of an Asian American hip-hop musical, directed by the author, at a private liberal arts college in the US. This article demonstrates how the production process was determined by the complex history of racial formation and relations in America. Those who…

In 2016, professors representing Biology, Dance, Music, and Theatre and dance program students created "Dunes," a performance piece that depicts the ecological succession of Michigan's sand dunes. The process used to make this work is a direct representation of the steps that Team Hyena Puppet, a collective of teaching artists and…

This piece presents a theoretical exploration of the potential for the creation of policy that would inform the inclusion of arts and particularly theater courses in all community colleges. In April 2017, Fong et al. released a comprehensive meta-analysis that explored the relationship between psychosocial factors of self-perception and motivation…

The Posbolonian Uniform is a creative, artistic and performative response, undertaken as a criticism and opposition to the losses of democratic freedoms that have occurred in Spain recently. It is a bid by two university instructors for the use of artistic tools, specifically performance art, as a means of social transformation in their academic…

In this article, the authors aim to provide a multifaceted lens on to Dorothy Heathcote's enormous influence on the field of drama education. They choose to order the reminiscences historically, focusing on Heathcote's consistency of passion and purpose. The anecdotes, lesson descriptions, and reminiscences capture her voice, her energy, and her…

To inform students about global violence against women and to empower them to take action, the authors developed an interdisciplinary course focused on experiential learning and theatre education. Their article discusses the development of the course; the implementation of active learning strategies to develop critical thinking, empathy, and…

This paper recounts the investigative journey of a small group of faculty and graduate students at the University of British Columbia who extensively employed research-based theatre methods to collaboratively and performatively explore three distinct but related contexts that represent critical "moments" in the professional lives of…